Uber Drops Rates in New York City by 20%

Uber, an on-demand car service that uses an app to summon a vehicle, announced it is temporarily lowering prices of its UberX service by 20% in New York City.

The lower rates are available anywhere in the five boroughs and make the cost of using Uber less than using a yellow cab. Uber did not specific how long the promotion will last.

Several Uber-provided comparisons, including Williamsburg to the East Village (now $15 with Uber, $16 by yellow cab, and formerly $19 with Uber) and Grand Central Terminal in midtown to the downtown financial district ($22, $28, $24), show the savings.

Uber, unlike yellow cabs, is regulated as a livery service, so it is allowed to set its own prices. As a private company, it can do so far more quickly as well. It also has the reserves to withstand a price way: last month Uber raised an additional $1.2 billion in new capital, putting the value of the company at $17 billion.

The coronavirus is now affecting 104 countries and territories across the globe and many travelers are postponing or cancelling their travel plans as a result.
In some cases, a traveler is holding off because travel to his destination is simply not possible due to quarantine and containment rules; in others, it’s simply a desire not to go somewhere where one might end up with the coronavirus or trapped in a quarantined …

In early May, Warren Buffett divested all of his investment firm’s holdings in the four major U.S. airlines, warning that the “world has changed” for the aviation industry due to the coronavirus crisis. In mid May, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said he saw a bumpy road ahead for the airline industry and predicted that a major carrier would not survive 2020 as a result.
It appears Buffett and Calhoun were on …